At a recent Smash Wrestling show in Toronto towards the end of June, featuring cross-promotional matches with Femmes Fatales, DEFY, and Progress, SlamWrestling.net had the chance to catch up with “Psycho” Mike Rollins. Having featured Rollins twice before, once in 2012 and more recently in 2019, Mike brought us up to speed on how he navigated pandemic wrestling, his other ventures outside of the ring, and why he has a hard time watching a match as a fan (it’s not for the reason you may think).
Our interview took place right after the ring veteran wrestled a double-bill with a match earlier that evening in a six-man tag match, then filling in last-minute for the absent Juventud Guerrera in another tag match. This, he acknowledged, is after wrestling two days prior with a five and-a-half drive each way for the match. The first thing he did is sit down, but with his mind already on the work ahead of time the next day.
“Well, I gotta take out the trash tomorrow,” he deadpans. No rest for the psycho, it seems.
It turns out, though, that having a match added to his night actually took some pressure off. When he heard the bookers were trying to find him, he started readying himself up … for a promo. “I was still in my gear, for when I go out and meet people,” he explains. “So, I assume was going to do a promo or something, and I gotta get amped up for it. It’s always easy to fill in for a match — that’s better than doing a promo.”
Around that last time that Rollins spoke with SlamWrestling.net, he was headed for a tour of Japan. Less than a year after that, he was finding his way through the new normal of pandemics and quarantines along with everyone else.
In March of 2020, Rollins was touring the UK, and remembers well how quickly everything changed. “Things are okay, but you hear rumblings,” he begins. “Our plane took off and landed in London, and then we get out to get the WiFi and then we find out, oh, Canada’s falling apart. We do the first two days of our loop, and then things start falling apart over there, and I was like, ‘Okay, I guess it’s time to head home’. We land back in Canada, and we were on the runway when they were announcing the border closure.”
“I just felt like something was about to kickstart for me,” Rollins continues. “I got a bit insecure and lost confidence. Smash Wrestling and Sebastian Suave have done so much for me, and when things started opening up again, this would have been in 2022, wXw (in Germany) would bring some Smash guys over and I was lucky enough to be one of them. I was really nervous about it, because now I’m flying overseas again and, in my head, it’s kind of continuing that story, but I don’t feel ready or anything, and I’m so tired. But it’s kind of a blessing in disguise because if I was well rested, I guarantee I would have overthought everything and then not done what I was good at.”
“But I just went out and did my greatest hits, and it worked.”
How do the nerves of getting back into a regular wrestling routine compare to when he was brand-new to the business? “I remember earlier on, I guess my nerves were more around making mistakes,” he offers. “More of like the fundamental stuff — hurting somebody and all those sorts of things. Now, my worries are, because my act relies on a lot of goodwill from the audience, I need them to reciprocate. I don’t want to go out there looking like an idiot. You know, something misfires, it doesn’t work the way I want it, I just look stupid. So those are the things I get worried about. Well, I have to be less insecure about it and just trust that, I believe it, they’ll be having fun.”
“I hope you’re having fun. If you’re not just don’t tell me in person, you can just talk behind my back on the car ride home.”
Rollins then chimed in on whether he gets to sit back and enjoy watching a show that’s he’s in, or if it’s too hard to watch as a fan in a situation like that. “I’m gonna say no, but not for the reason you’re thinking okay,” he responds. “It’s just because when I’m watching and enjoying something, my gears start turning and it’s, ‘What can I do with that guy?’ If I had a match, what would we do together? So it’s hard to disassociate myself from that; it’s hard for me just to I guess enjoy the wrestling show for the sake of wrestling show days. Maybe that’s a bit of a boring answer.”
In between the two points of pre and post-quarantine, Rollins did something many others did as well: looked for different ways to keep busy and keep creative. He teases a project he put together with wrestler Kris Chambers: a mockumentary about a zombie chasing his dream of becoming a pro wrestler.
“One of the shows I look forward to every year is a zombie wrestling show,” Rollins explains, referring to a recurring show put on by Superkick’d Wrestling in Toronto, involving Chambers, for one. “So I just came up with this idea: there’s a zombie living in the small town of Waterdown (Ontario). That’s my hometown. He really just wants to break out. It’s a fun little project that kept my creative juices going and kept me sane.”
Although “Sane Mike” may not be what the crowds come to see, it does speak to how Rollins got back in the groove with hardly a skip, and that’s good news for wrestling fans.
TOP IMAGE: Psycho Mike vs. Litigator Luke, during a Smash Wrestling show in London, Ontario, on April 30, 2023. Photo by Steve Argintaru, Twitter: @stevetsn Instagram: @stevetsn
RELATED LINKS
- June 21, 2019: Conscience clear: Psycho Mike debuts in Japan
- Feb 23, 2012: Examining Mike Rollins’ Psycho mind
- June 26, 2023: Smash, DEFY, Femmes Fatales, and Progress open their own forbidden doors in Toronto show
